Page 132 of Degradation

The fabric comes down again, and the water starts like this is a bad movie on repeat. Only, this time, I don’t fight it at all. I lie there. I let the darkness take me, let it pull me under.

Maybe, if I’m really lucky, I won’t wake up. Maybe this will all be over and then I’m free. I’m done.

In my head I can hear a lullaby, I can almost hear the demons of hell singing, welcoming me home. I hold my hands out, offering them for all the devils to take. I’m coming home. I’m finally coming home.

But luck has never been on my side, has it?

My body convulses violently as I cough up the fluid from my lungs. Life, reality all of it hurts as I take in one horrible breath after another.

I know I’m back in the room, strapped to the board, and those men are still there, ready to hurt me more.

“Welcome back,” the first man says, his voice cold. “Ready to talk yet?”

Devin

Ican hear Paitlyn’s ragged breaths echoing off the cold walls, the sound of her suffering a symphony to my hatred.

I don’t look back. I don’t need to see her pitiful state to know she’s broken.

But not broken enough. Not yet.

The hallway is dimly lit, the air thick with the stench of bleach, as I make my way back from the toilet block to the main room. A few of the men got a little too handsy with the girls we dragged down here. A few of the girls didn’t make it.

The ones that are left are drugged to their eyeballs. They’re so high right now they have no idea where the fuck they are or what is going on.

One is spinning around on a scaffold pole Mace procured from God only knows where. Her hands are sliding all up the metal from where they’re covered in her blood, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Her head is thrown back, her legs are wide, and she’s going around and around in circles while humming some tune that sounds eerily like a nursery rhyme.

No one is even looking at her. If she fell and smacked her head, I don’t think anyone would care.

I shake my head, noticing how the room quietens down as I enter. All their eyes following me like I’m the fucking Pied Piper.

I sit at the table, pick up my rifle, and start breaking it apart to clean it again. The ritual is soothing, the cold metal against my calloused hands a comfort.

As I unclick the barrel, my mind drifts to Magnus. I wonder what the bastard is doing right now. Is he plotting against me, trying to find a way to take me down? The thought makes me smirk. My brother is no fool. He may be occupied right now with becoming Chapter Lord, but that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten me.

Besides, we still have Titus, don’t we? The clock is ticking faster and faster for when Magnus is going to need him.

I shake my head, ramming the pipe cleaner down into the barrel.

“You think she’ll talk soon?” Jackson, a burly man now with a beard down to his chest, asks, bringing me out of my head.

His eyes are bloodshot, too many nights of little sleep and too much drink to try and quieten down the nightmares he suffers when he finally does get some shut eye.

I shrug. “She’ll talk when she realizes there’s no other way out.”

“Maybe we should just end her.” Jackson suggests, his voice gruff. “She’s clearly off her head. And she’s causing more trouble than she’s worth.”

I look up, my eyes meeting his. “She’s worth it.” I state. “Think of all the hours, all the years of suffering you’ve endured because of that bitch. We end her now, what does that give us? It doesn’t give us justice, it doesn’t give us recompense. She deserves to suffer just as much as we have. She deserves to lay in that cell, to rot away as we carve out every single moment of our sentence into her flesh.”

He grunts but doesn’t argue further. He knows better. They all do.

The room falls into a tense silence. The only sound is the soft click of my rifle parts as I reassemble it. I can feel their eyes on me, waiting for my next move, my next order.

These men used to be something, used to be the best of the best. Paitlyn did this, Paitlyn created this. They’re like sheep now, lost without their shepherd. But I’m no shepherd. I’m the fucking wolf.

“She needs to eat.” Lyndon says suddenly.

I glance over at him.